In short,the wayfarer,who had at first been so coldly received,contrived by his frank and engaging manner to draw the ladies of the kitchen into a most confidential conversation,in which Laura's history was minutely detailed,from the day of her husband's departure to the present.The salient feature in all their discourse was her unflagging devotion to his memory.
Having apparently learned all that he wanted to know--among other things that she was at this moment,as always,alone--the traveller said he was quite dry;and thanking the servants for their kindness,departed as he had come.On emerging into the darkness he did not,however,go down the avenue by which he had arrived.He simply walked round to the front door.There he rang,and the door was opened to him by a man-servant whom he had not seen during his sojourn at the other end of the house.
In answer to the servant's inquiry for his name,he said ceremoniously,'Will you tell The Honourable Mrs.Northbrook that the man she nursed many years ago,after a frightful accident,has called to thank her?'
The footman retreated,and it was rather a long time before any further signs of attention were apparent.Then he was shown into the drawing-room,and the door closed behind him.
On the couch was Laura,trembling and pale.She parted her lips and held out her hands to him,but could not speak.But he did not require speech,and in a moment they were in each other's arms.
Strange news circulated through that mansion and the neighbouring town on the next and following days.But the world has a way of getting used to things,and the intelligence of the return of The Honourable Mrs.Northbrook's long-absent husband was soon received with comparative calm.
A few days more brought Christmas,and the forlorn home of Laura Northbrook blazed from basement to attic with light and cheerfulness.Not that the house was overcrowded with visitors,but many were present,and the apathy of a dozen years came at length to an end.The animation which set in thus at the close of the old year did not diminish on the arrival of the new;and by the time its twelve months had likewise run the course of its predecessors,a son had been added to the dwindled line of the Northbrook family.
At the conclusion of this narrative the Spark was thanked,with a manner of some surprise,for nobody had credited him with a taste for tale-telling.Though it had been resolved that this story should be the last,a few of the weather-bound listeners were for sitting on into the small hours over their pipes and glasses,and raking up yet more episodes of family history.But the majority murmured reasons for soon getting to their lodgings.
It was quite dark without,except in the immediate neighbourhood of the feeble street-lamps,and before a few shop-windows which had been hardily kept open in spite of the obvious unlikelihood of any chance customer traversing the muddy thoroughfares at that hour.
By one,by two,and by three the benighted members of the Field-Club rose from their seats,shook hands,made appointments,and dropped away to their respective quarters,free or hired,hoping for a fair morrow.It would probably be not until the next summer meeting,months away in the future,that the easy intercourse which now existed between them all would repeat itself.The crimson maltster,for instance,knew that on the following market-day his friends the President,the Rural Dean,and the bookworm would pass him in the street,if they met him,with the barest nod of civility,the President and the Colonel for social reasons,the bookworm for intellectual reasons,and the Rural Dean for moral ones,the latter being a staunch teetotaller,dead against John Barleycorn.The sentimental member knew that when,on his rambles,he met his friend the bookworm with a pocket-copy of something or other under his nose,the latter would not love his companionship as he had done to-day;and the President,the aristocrat,and the farmer knew that affairs political,sporting,domestic,or agricultural would exclude for a long time all rumination on the characters of dames gone to dust for scores of years,however beautiful and noble they may have been in their day.
The last member at length departed,the attendant at the museum lowered the fire,the curator locked up the rooms,and soon there was only a single pirouetting flame on the top of a single coal to make the bones of the ichthyosaurus seem to leap,the stuffed birds to wink,and to draw a smile from the varnished skulls of Vespasian's soldiery.
End
